What's Up, Wednesday?

Okay, here's the thing.  It's been cold.  Then today it got warm.  I hate that.  Let me just duck while you all throw rotten tomatoes at me, but I love the cold.  But more specifically what I love is coming inside after being out in the cold and getting cozy.  Which is why I was about as happy as I can be when I came home after grocery shopping on Friday (the day I took the above pic) to a fire my husband had made and an evening to read this book on the couch with my dogs.

This twice baked potato was miraculous.  Somebody my husband works with gave us a couple of these recently, explaining that he has perfected this particular culinary delight.  He wasn't wrong.

Also, the Target Dollar Spot this month has been phenomenal.  I have bought lots of banners.  Lots. Of. Banners.  This little tray may just be my favorite though.  Florals for the win every time.

I'm not at all sorry to have made up this whole #onepictellsastory deal on Instagram, even though I do realize I could have just saved myself a lot of time and told some people on Facebook to unfollow me. (LOL)   It makes me stop and appreciate moments like this.

We've been getting more math stuff in from my Donor's Choose project and have started to reap the benefits in class. 

Also, we did this writing project about Martin Luther King, Jr. last week.  They were supposed to write about their own dream.  They each have a picture on the side with them looking thoughtful (which I cropped out of this pic for privacy's sake), and I was happy with how supercute these turned out to be.  Oh, and meanwhile I'm just over here livin' the dream...

Last, the girl represented her school in the Catholic Schools Spelling Bee today.  In typical fashion for her, she took it all in stride and didn't even study or tell us about it until the last minute.  She made it to the top 5.  The word she missed was "Icarus".  I told she flew too close to the sun, and she totally got the reference and proceeded to explain to my son and husband why that was funny.  I think I was more proud of her for that than for going to the Spelling Bee.

What's Up, Wednesday?

The first "What's Up?" of 2017 - let's do this.

Rogue One was very, very good.  We got to go for free because the realtor we worked with this year rented out the theater for a customer appreciation night.  This was pretty nice considering we neither sold nor bought a house this year.  We did make a formal offer on one, and that's what got us the invite, complete with free popcorn and drinks.

When I heard that Carrie Fisher died a few days before we went to see this, my reaction was kind of "Awww, that's too bad, " and I went about my day.  So it took me off guard when the final scene of Rogue One snuck up and sucker punched me in the feels.  I actually teared up.  Whoa, where did that come from? 

I finished my last book of 2016, Hillbilly Elegy.  I related to this book for a number of reasons: I teach kids who live in poverty, my paternal grandfather was a coal miner for a number of years, and my maternal grandmother left high school due to poverty, but the bottom line is:  I think this is a good book for a lot of people to read.

New Year's Eve was rocking -  appetizers for dinner and trivial pursuit!

My office space got a tad out of control in December what with work and the holidays:

but I managed to get it back to workable on Monday.

Also my wonderful husband put in a light fixture and ceiling fan there. This room has always been lacking in lighting department.  Do you ever finally bite the bullet and tackle a home improvement project and then ask yourself, "Why in the world didn't we do this sooner?"  Yeah, us too.

My Donor's Choose math project was fully funded right before Christmas.  Boxes started arriving today!

I also kicked off a #onepictellsastory on Instagram this week - one picture a day for the whole 365. 

We're due for snow tomorrow.  I'm really looking forward to it.  How else are we supposed to know it's January?

#onepictellsastory

I use my cell phone all the time to pick up little details of my day.  Sometimes I share them on the blog or use them for inspiration when I need something to write about, but most times I don't.  It's nice to look back on them over the month and remember the small details of life.  Instagram is the perfect place for this, but I need the motivation to remember to do it.  I'm doing this for myself as much as anything else.  I want to be able to look back at the end of next year and see the big story of 2017 with 365 little stories.

I'm shooting for one picture a day on Instagram this year.  I'm thinking it will be small details most days, as those are the pictures I tend to take.  It might be bigger news on other days.

I'll be using #onepictellsastory as my hashtag.  Feel free to follow along with my 2017 stories on my Instagram account. 

Here's to many good stories in 2017.

17 Books in 2017

In 2014, I started a Facebook Book Group called 14 Books in 2014.  You can read the original post here if you are so inclined.  The idea was for a group of book lovers to share which books they read that year as well as how many.  At the end of 2014, I shared all my titles and handed out a few awards (post on that here).  Last year I shared what I had read in 2015 (post here).  And that's what today's post is for...the books I read in 2016.  Feel free to join in the fun here if you're interested.  If you're already a member of my group, you've seen all the titles as I've read them throughout the year, but here they all are without further ado, in one nice, neat list for you.

My 2016 reads were:

#1 The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
#2 The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
#3 Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
#4 The Blondes by Emily Schultz
#5 Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
#6 Me Before You by JoJo Meyes
#7 Calvin by Martine Leavitt
#8 Walden on Wheels by Ken Ilgunas
#9 The Grownup by Gillian Flynn
#10 The Passage by Justin Cronin
#11 The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr
#12 Matilda by Roald Dahl
#13 The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon
#14 The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
#15 The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan
#16 The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey
#17 Veronica Mars The Thousand Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham
#18 Tiny Little Thing by Beatriz Williams
#19 Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts by Susan Cain
#20 The Good Girl by Mary Kubica
#21 The Girls by Emma Cline
#22 Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It by Various Authors
#23 Don't You Cry by Mary Kubica
#24 The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin
#25 Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam
#26 Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty
#27 Love That Boy by Ron Fournier
#28 The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin
#29 Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
#30 The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin
#31 The Power of Play by David Elkind
#32 All The Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood
#33 We Are Unprepared by Meg Little Reilly
#34 Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica
#35 The One-In-A-Million Boy by Monica Wood
#36 The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
#37 Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead
#38 Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

My total went up 3 books this year.  38 books for 2016...break it down:

30 were fiction. 8 were nonfiction.  Actually, I feel like that's a bit misleading.  The three books I read by Melanie Benjamin were based on real people and events.  Benjamin does a fictional imagining of what these real people were thinking and feeling.  Let's count them as fiction with a twist of nonfiction, mmmkay?

Two recurring authors this year: Melanie Benjamin and Mary Kubica

27 Never Before Read Authors (actually more than that if you count all the authors from Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It, but I'm not going to): Kathleen Grissom, Kristin Hannah, Emily Schultz, JoJo Meyes, Martine Leavitt, Ken Ilgunas, Justin Cronin, Mary Karr, Alena Graedon, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Karan Mahajan, M.R. Carey, Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham, Beatriz Williams, Mary Kubica, Melanie Benjamin, Rumaan Alam, Ron Fournier, Daphne Du Maurier, David Elkind, Bryn Greenwood, Meg Little Reilly, Monica Wood, Maggie Shipstead, J.D. Vance, and a bunch of essay writers in Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It

Books with movie or television series tie-ins: Me Before You (haven't seen it), Matilda, (only seen small snippets), The Girl With All The Gifts, (forthcoming), and Veronica Mars The Thousand Dollar Tan Line (haven't seen it and don't want to), The Handmaid's Tale (forthcoming on Hulu)

And now for the awards...let's start with some new ones.

The "Mammoth Award" goes to...The Passage
This one was a monster of a book.  It was well worth the time invested.

The "Resonating Book on Writing" goes to...Big Magic
It's a rare book on writing...or creating anything for that matter.

The "Let's All Pay Homage to the Road This Woman Paved" Award goes to...Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
People talk all the time about the likes of female writers who tell creepy, eerie, murderous tales like Gillian Flynn, Mary Kubica, and Paula Hawkins.  Du Maurier precedes them all in a stellar manner. This is the one to read.

The "Most Intriguing Premise" Award goes to...Calvin by Martine Leavitt
Ever wonder what became of Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes... this is an interesting take on that.

The "I Read Everything This Writer Has Written This Year" Award goes to..
Melanie Benjamin and Mary Kubica

And for some repeat awards...

Best Author Find... Melanie Benjamin, hands down
I love the way she fictionalizes real people and events.

The "Stayed With Me The Longest in an Unsettling but Fascinating Way" Award goes to...
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (Atwood has won this award from me before with Oryx and Crake.  I suspect she will win it again someday.)

The "Page Turner" Award...Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty
Seriously, I had to find out what happened at that barbeque.

"Made Me Cry" Award...The One-In-A-Million Boy by Monica Wood
I won't tell you why.  No spoilers here!

It's 2017, and I'll be changing the name of the group today.  If you'd like to join, you can do so right here.  Here's to more books in the New Year!

December Reading Receipt

Linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy!

Alas, December was a busy month.  I was shooting to read four books this month and only finished two.  I did make four kinds of cookies and candy though. 

This first was Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead.  This was so my kind of book.  Set in the competitive world of ballet, it had drama and beauty and mistakes and people who were not perfect.  I knew it was good when after reading five pages, I was ready to read anything else this author had written.

The second was Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. I got tired of waiting for it from the library for over a month, so I asked my husband to buy it for me for Christmas. This got a lot of hype after the election.  This is an excellent memoir and rang several bells for me, but frankly I don't really agree that it explains the results of the election, as I saw it billed in several places. That's pretty much all I want to say about that, Forrest Gump, since the last thing I want to do is get into a discussion about the election ON THE INTERNET.  No, thank you.  I've seen way too much of that this year and far too many people who are only too comfortable typing things into a comment box that they would never have the nerve to say to someone's face.   That being said, I think this is a book that everyone should read.

So that's it for 2016.  Stay tuned for my yearly update for my Facebook group 16 Book in 2016!

So This Was Christmas 2016

Christmas was great this year.  We were out of school on Wednesday, so thankfully we had some days to get ready.  We went to see Sing on Tuesday night since it wasn't a school night.  It was a $5 early showing...so even better!

The next night we had our annual viewing of the Grinch.  Everyone gets new Grinch pajamas for this night each year.

Thursday was baking day.  My favorite new thing this year were these bonbons.  O.M.G.  They will now be made every year.

We went to my parent's house Christmas Eve after Mass and opened presents there with my brother and his family.  I remember when I found out my sister-in-law was pregnant at the same time as me over 11 years ago.  I was so excited because I knew it meant my kids would have a cousin close to their ages to grow up with.  And that's just what has happened.

Christmas Day was a success.  As the kids get older, presents are getting smaller and easier to wrap.  Very few things have to be put together beforehand now.  While that makes it easier to be ready, I still think I would go back to when they were two and four given a choice.

Christmas Day was different this year.  Normally we just stay home and recuperate, but this year everyone came to our house for brunch.  This is actually possible now that we aren't up to 2 A.M. wrapping and putting things together.  And while I didn't get very many pictures of the people, I did manage to get pictures of the food.  Priorities.

Oh, and we weren't the only ones who received Cubs gear.

It was indeed a Merry Christmas!

What's Up, Wednesday? Post Thanksgiving/Pre-Christmas Edition

Thanksgiving was delightful and a much needed break for family time. 

My brothers and I were inspired to recreate an old family photo:

Apparently, not much has changed.

We saw Fantastic Beasts and put up all the Christmas decorations.  

Our elf also arrived that week.  I know I'm not fooling anyone with the elf anymore (especially when I accidentally texted a list of what we needed for the elf breakfast to the girl instead of my husband like I meant to), but it's still a tradition.  I don't think they minded a bit.  I also informed my daughter the elf will still be coming out when she is home from college one day.

It's been nice this year that our kids are now old enough to enjoy some Christmas movies that are a bit more sophisticated than a 30 minute version of Frosty the Snowman.  The girl and I watched one of my favorites, A Christmas Carol, (George C. Scott edition), and both kids watched Elf with us last weekend.

The girl had her Christmas dance recital this past weekend and both kids performed in their school program this week.  Bravo!

Only 4 more days 'til break!  Our administrators gifted us today with all kinds of holiday goodies.  Love! 

And speaking of feeling appreciated...I feel like I'm really behind on my Christmas shopping. But never fear!  I threw together a little something for the heroes of my holiday shopping list, UPS and FedEx.  Honestly, I don't know how I'd get this production together if it weren't for them!  I saw this idea on Instagram and was like, "Done!"  Here's to the unsung heroes!

Kim